


Cerulean

by atelier



Category: 999: Nine Hours Nine Persons Nine Doors - Fandom
Genre: Gen, differentiating between akane/june and aoi/santa yep yep, spoilersu, things that don't change over nine years, written like an acid trip
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-20
Updated: 2012-05-20
Packaged: 2017-11-05 16:26:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/408532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atelier/pseuds/atelier
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Santa got me the colors I wanted, he brought me the colors I needed to tell my story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cerulean

She holds the crayon in her hand, shakily tracing the outline of a cloud onto the pristine white paper. Her hand is unsteady, her eyebrows knotted with concentration, and her tongue pressed between her lips. Her heart is in her mouth, because this is her first mark onto her paper and she has to do it _right_ \--

("What do you want to be when you grow up, Akane?"

The girl looks surprised at the sudden question, and she blushes a little, twisting her fingers together and staring down at the grass.)

The girl sits back, setting the crayon down on the table, its blunted tip standing out like a sore thumb among its sharper comrades. She regards the cloud she has drawn, but there is something missing. Something that she doesn't think the crayons at her fingertips can offer her.

(She considers a multitude of answers, a plethora of futures that could be hers, she is a river at a fork and she thinks this decision might be the one that matters.

"I want to be...")

Santa places his hand on June's forehead, immediately jerking it back and staring incredulously at his pale palm, and then at June's feverish face.

"Yikes! You're burning up!"

_when i was little, mama would bring me a cup of hot tea, hotter than the burning in my head, and she would put her cool hands on my forehead and tell me everything would be okay. mama's hands were always so cold, just like papa's. i was scared of those hands, they were cold in winter and cold in summer, and i couldn't feel any heat in them. i wondered about those hands, it was like they were magical because they could hold me and my brother and they could tell about how much love we had, they could cook delicious food and they could scare away the monsters._

The little girl picks up her second crayon, this one a pale spring green, and she begins to color the grass of her world. Green, she decides, is like the color of a promise, a happy promise that's kind of like him saying that he'll be her prince on a white horse. It's a calming color.

\- my princess, i'll crown you in flowers and decorate you until i die -

She is withering. She cannot see for the tears, the films over her eyes, and the screams are not her own. Or perhaps it is because they are her own, that it is so very terrifying. She wilts beneath the weight of her tears, she crumples and falls like a delicate tower of cards, clawing desperately at the grate on the floor. But her hands are too small, and too weak, (and she cannot tell her story with just two hands) and the grate is unyielding like a fake promise.

"Hate you hate you hate you hateyouhateyouhateyou," she whispers to the floor, her voice tiny and broken. "Hate. You." It is a scream now, a scream that pierces the hot air of the incinerator, made hot with her tears and desperation, she cannot survive here. She was not meant to exist here. She is not herself. She has never been herself, she is split in half, split in six, split into a hundred, split into zero.

_plants belong outside, in the light of the sun, mama would say as she holds the door open for my brother and i to run outside and play. outside, there was green grass, and there were flowers and plants in every color of the rainbow. we didn't keep plants at home, but when i asked why there were no fresh flowers to decorate our table, papa would just shake his head. he would say that plants belong outside, under the light of the sun, and they would wilt inside._

_mama, papa, am i a flower, too?_

Bright yellow sunlight, a crayon the color of warm goldenrods in a blossoming field. The girl carefully draws the shape of the floating ball in the sky, it is the source of all life and it is the shining sun in the sky beneath which plants will grow and thrive. There must be a sun in her world.

hot flames hot hot burningburningburningburning and then she was ice

June stands in the second class cabin, her face pensive as she stares at the box of matches in her hand. Her back is to Junpei, who is investigating in the bedroom. He had passed right over the matches, despite Akane having placed them there merely hours ago. June slowly slides the box open, and she remembers flames, she sees the insides of a man splattered across a hallway, the sound of bones crunching and breaking from impact, because eighty-one seconds isn't long enough to do anything.

...Nor were eighteen minutes, Akane thinks with a wry frown as she slips the box of matches into her pocket. Eighteen minutes is hardly enough time to save a life.

June feels the weight in her pocket as she turns on one heel and follows Junpei into the bedroom, her steps soft and silent. Akane's steps are heavy, perhaps even made moreso by the lightness of June's walk. Eighteen minutes, nine hours, nine years, three six zero. Like a game of hopscotch.


End file.
